Paradise Lost: Sin in Noir
by Jason McKenzie, Plymouth State University
Sin in the classical period of Noir is treated much in accordance with the Judeo Christian code of morality - in that any major transgression against it is met with a balancing force. Either the character is racked with guilt, or, more frequently, she or he must die. It is not until Neo-noirs- which strive to mach the impact of the classical period- that storylines begin to defy this karmic convention. Ripley’s Game and The Talented Mr. Ripley, in which the brazen and murderous Tom Ripley never gets caught or punished is an example of this evolution, but Thieves Like Us, an early Neo-noir (1974), still adheres to the formula; the protagonist Bowie wins the audience’s favor, but still must pay for his misdeeds with his life. The film version spares the innocent Keechie, but the book does not. This is evidence that Hollywood is more likely to employ this code than an author is. Hollywood is built on convention, while novelists are as varied as their stories and remain bound by little more than their artistic vision.
It is interesting that the film adaptation of Shoot the Piano Player did not include the violent rampage the print Edward went on after his wife’s suicide. Nor did it address his past experience in the World War II. Without these dark episodes, the morality of Edward’s character remains relatively unblemished. In the book, the tirade was precipitated by the emotional devastation of losing his wife, and excused by being directed towards people who provoke him. Illustrating the tangled pattern Noir usually weaves into its storylines, Edward’s violence towards these “thugs” is displaced aggression “itching to find the throat of the very dear friend,” (Goodis 655), his manager who had bartered with Edward’s wife for sex. In the film version, Edouard/Charlie persecutes himself for the death of his wife by falling into a deep malaise; he is reclusive and perpetually introspective. Goodis’ version is more volatile.
Noir puts many of its characters, like Al in Detour, in positions from whence it is nearly impossible to atone for their sins. A murder can’t be “fixed;” it is a final, irreversible act which precludes atonement to the victim. To alleviate guilt, the character must channel his/her repentance into some other avenue, like Jake Gittes going “straight” as a P.I. in Chinatown. Eddie in Shoot the Piano Player is another example of a character whose self identity is composed in part of guilt- in his case for the suicide of his wife. Henry Jordan in Pick-Up is the paradigm of the guilty conscience; he still feels responsible for Helen’s death after the coroner’s report clears him. Regardless of the avenue by which each character in Noir arrives at a guilty conscience, he remains forever scarred.
In Detour, Al’s guilt seemed incongruous with his actions. He is repentant to a disproportionate level in relation to his apparent sins. If we take the narrator at face value, then he does not kill Haskell and needn’t let his death worry him so. However, should we question the credibility of the narrator, the implication is that Al deserves to wander in purgatory for his misdeeds. The tacked-on ending in which Al is picked up hitchhiking by a police cruiser is strong evidence that Hollywood’s code is based upon Judeo Christian law; he is responsible for Vera’s death, thus must atone for his sin.
Vera, as Detour’s vampish, femme fatale meets with moral retribution for having snared Al via blackmail. Though he may be the vessel through which this retribution is enacted, Al is nonetheless dejected by the fact that he is a murderer. There is confusion- to Al himself and to the audience- as to whether he killed Vera in cold blood, or if it was, as it superficially appeared, an “accident.” Regardless of whether Vera gets what she deserves, Al remains plagued with guilt. This is the worst - though perhaps only- possible resolution to Al’s road trip gone awry. I get the impression that Detour’s message may be that to veer from one’s rut can spell disaster; that to abandon stability, albeit undesirable, disrupts some karmic balance which must be rectified.
An interesting question that Noir raises about evil is who is ultimately responsible. In stories like Thieves Like Us, The Killer Inside Me, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Shoot the Piano Player, external forces in the protagonist’s environment account as much for their misdeeds as their own volition.
In Thieves Like Us, society at large, namely politicians and corporate execs, is as guilty of corruption as the bank robbers. The story even goes so far as to suggest that such entities have pushed the trio into a life of crime just to survive.
In The Killer Inside Me, Lou Ford is shaped into a deranged murderer in childhood by a seductive maid and a vengeful father. We begin to wonder whether Lou, in the depths of his psychosis, is simply an automaton created by the sin of others. If so, then he as well may be perceived as a vessel through which morality enacts retribution. This view causes us to scrutinize all his victims under a lens of morality, in which the slightest transgression is met with vengeance. Even his fiancée?
Ripley’s Game is a spot-on allegory for how Noir treats its characters: Tom Ripley chooses to draw an otherwise innocent man into the fold of murder and deception on little more than a whim. The innocent man is damned from the start: by appeasing one evil (Ripley), he is irrevocably entangled with another (murder). There is no way out. Ripley, a masterful home fatale, remains largely unaffected by his destruction of the man’s life and we get the impression that he will likely embark upon similar endeavors again. Through flashbacks, the film hints at Ripley’s remorse, but does not dwell on it. What makes Ripley such a compelling character in Noir is his inhuman ability to disassociate his conscience from guilt. This is a character that would likely have had trouble satisfying Classical Noir period censors, whose code was retribution. When the Ukrainians come for Ripley and his new partner, they not only fail, but are killed themselves. Ripley, in effect, kills the audience’s sense of morality. It is this shock to convention that makes Highsmith’s stories so compelling, and it is their lack of morality which makes them plausible film ideas for a contemporary audience.
Psychoanalytic theory pervades Classical Noir, and the treatment of sin is no exception. Freud maintained that women have underdeveloped superegos, and therefore less of an internalized concept of right and wrong than do men. The femme fatale Annie Laurie in Gun Crazy illustrates this point. She crosses the Rubicon of moral decay, leaving Bart on the other side. He is forced to kill her in order to atone for his own misdeeds; it is treated as the one good decision he makes in his entire relationship with her. Helen, from Charles Willeford’s novel Pick-Up, also lacks the conscience that drives the novel’s protagonist Henry to suicide as atonement for having squandered his gifts and lost interest in life. She remains passively controlled by her addiction, suggesting that women are incapable of possessing the will to change, or even the capacity for repentance. The character of Molly in Nightmare Alley is another example of a woman who, though she may be able to identify the difference between good and evil, is still powerless to act of her own volition. She follows Stan’s instruction dutifully- sleeping with the magnate Ezra Grindle in an attempt to swindle him. In the film adaptation, however, Molly’s character relents to her moral value system and declares that she cannot commit the act. It would seem this discrepancy between the novel and the film is an attempt at keeping her character on the good side of Hollywood’s moral divide.
Anna, the femme fatale in British film The Third Man creates the antithesis of the American notion that nice guys get what they deserve. In the powerful last scene of the movie, she rejects the good-natured Holly Martins; the villainous Harry Lime not only prospers in life, but also wins the love of the lead female in death. It is noteworthy that the naïve Martins is the one who kills Lime, as if to say that the American concept of right and wrong cannot accept the corruption that Europe has infused in the expatriate Lime. Martins, utterly incapable of fathoming the sin to which Lime is accustomed, is another example of a vessel through which retribution is enacted, but the implication is that the experience costs him his innocence and will cast a dark shadow over him forever.
Evelyn Cross Mulwray in Chinatown is an entirely new breed of femme fatale - she inadvertently draws Jake and Mr. Mulwray to their destructions, emotional and physical, respectively, but she is the film’s only morally irreproachable character. Her death is indicative of a new era in Noir in which evil has outgrown morality’s code. Sin is so ominous that a character’s only defense against it is, as Jake Gittes put it, to do “as little as possible.”
Alcohol plays a key role in Noir’s treatment of sin. Its use exacts retribution from the guilty. In The Killer Inside Me, sheriff Lou Ford doesn’t exercise violence on drunks because, as he puts it, they have already beat up on themselves. This sentiment is echoed in Nightmare Alley. Stanton Carlisle, engulfed by his sin, becomes his own executioner through his progressively destructive addiction to alcohol. Henry Jordan in Pick-Up battles with alcoholism, until, in a drunken stupor, he tries to kill himself and Helen. Jordan’s only real sin up till that point is that he takes no interest in life. He becomes the Noirish archetypal drifter- not guilty of any particular act, rather of a lifestyle unbecoming of the American ideal.
Noir’s treatment of sin is really not much different from most other Hollywood films: the culpable must pay. Retribution is either enacted by moral agents- usually another, less corrupt character, or the guilty party internalizes a standard of morality which s/he has failed and subsequently must repent for. Noir is full of the latter type as not-quite-good guys on their second chance, like Jake Gittes in Chinatown. We see a gradual shift in Noir’s treatment of sin, contemporaneous with religion’s influence in society; the formulaic adherence to retribution begins to wane in the Neo-noir period as the nation and the world grow increasingly secular.
Bibliography:
Polito, Robert. Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 1940s. Library of America. 1997. In which the following novels appear:
Anderson, Edward. Thieves Like Us
Cain, James. The Postman Always Rings Twice
Gresham, William Lindsay. Nightmare Alley
Polito, Robert. Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s. Library of America. 1997. In which the following novels appear:
Goodis, David. Down There
Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley
Thompson, Jim. The Killer Inside Me
Willeford, Charles. Pick-Up
Filmography:
Detour. Dir. by Elmer, Edward G. 1945.
Gun Crazy. Dir. By Louis, Joseph H. 1949.
Nightmare Alley. Dir. by Goulding, Edmund. 1947.
Talented Mr. Ripley. Dir. by Minghella, Anthony. 1999.
The Killer Inside Me. Dir. by Kennedy, Burt. 1976.
The Third Man. Dir. by Reed, Carol. 1949.
Thieves Like Us. Dir. by Altman, Robert. 1974.
Tirez Sur le Pianiste (aka Shoot the Piano Player). Dir. by Truffaut, Francois. 1960.
Ripley’s Game. Dir. by Cavani, Liliana. 2002.
